Epa: Tower Site Is Less Polluted

The Agency Is Closer To Abandoning Plans To Clean Up Pollutants At The Vacant Pesticide Factory.

December 2, 1992|By Kevin Spear of The Sentinel Staff

The Environmental Protection Agency has found more reason to cancel a major cleanup of an abandoned pesticide factory in south Lake County.

Recent EPA tests at the Tower Chemical site off County Road 455 confirmed what tests this spring discovered: a stew of pesticide toxins that once laced soil and underground water is disappearing.

''Results indicate there is very little contamination,'' said Mark Fite, an EPA project manager in Atlanta for the Tower Chemical cleanup 3 miles from Clermont.

The agency will review the tests for several months to determine what should be done about the remaining pockets of contamination, Fite said. A public hearing will be held during the review period.

Tower Chemical was one of the nation's first Superfund projects, a designation given to the most dangerously polluted sites. After an emergency removal of contaminated soil in 1983, the cleanup was delayed for several reasons, including the discovery of more contamination.

The EPA planned to install an incinerator to treat 15,000 tons of soil and a filtration plant to treat water pumped from underground. Costs were to exceed $18 million.

Soil and water tests done early this year to help the EPA design its cleanup work discovered that the pesticides dicofol and DDT had decayed. The tests found the prime contaminant to be 4,4'-dichlorobenzophenone, a chemical that binds to soil and is less toxic than the pesticides.

An EPA crew returned to the site this summer, taking several soil and water samples from 10 wells on the plant's property and from private homes within a half mile, Fite said.

One well, drilled below a settling pond, contained derivatives of DDT at a level exceeding those allowed in drinking water. Two other wells, drilled below a landfill, were found to have elevated levels of chromium, a metal suspected to cause cancer.

However, none of the water samples taken from wells in private homes showed elevated levels of toxins, Fite said.

Two on-site soil tests found DDT derivatives, which were in levels below the threshold for an EPA cleanup, Fite said.

The next step for the EPA will be another cleanup feasibility study. Fite said cleanup options range from doing nothing to installing a water filtering system.